Norwegian Terrorist Anders Breivik Reveals Climate Denial Influences

TO followers of the climate change policy debate, the extreme conspiratorial rhetoric is all too familiar:

Climate change is a hoax. Environmentalists are just communists in disguise. The United Nations is using efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions as a smokescreen for installing a world government. Greenies are actually reds. Eco fascists want your freedom.

Such rhetoric is daily bread for many neo-conservative commentators, some climate change deniers and even the occasional elected representative. The language is divisive, often becomes abusive and – regrettably – has become a feature of the manufactured debate over the risk posed by human-caused climate change.

The manifesto of Norwegian terrorist and Christian fundamentalist Anders Behring Breivik, currently facing trial for the massacre of 76 people, shows what can happen when the unhinged take the language of the far-right to its ultimate ends.

In the 1500-word document, published online under his Anglicised name Andrew Berwick before the brutal bombing and shootings in Norway, Breivik reveals a hatred for Islam and socialism.

But the manifesto also echoes the beliefs of many climate change deniers and cites the work of Lord Christopher Monckton, Alex Jones and Steve McIntyre.

The document reveals how sceptic commentators had convinced him that the so-called “climategate” hacking of emails and data disproved human-cased climate change.

Writing about the unauthorised release of emails from researchers of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in November 2009, Breivik says:

The information revealed how top scientists conspired to falsify data in the face of declining global temperatures in order to prop up the premise that man-made factors are driving climate change.

Breivik then provides seven URL links to the PrisonPlanet website of conservative radio host and climate change denier Alex Jones. Some of these links were re-posts of blogs written by Steve McIntyre.

Also in the manifesto, Breivik lists “environmentalist organisations” as being “smoke screens” for “cultural Marxists”. He also includes in this bracket, groups which advocate for animal rights, human rights, feminism and anti-racism.

In a section of his manifesto entitled “Green is the new Red - Stop Enviro-Communism!”, Breivik writes of the “global warming scam”:

You might know them as environmentalists, enviro-communists, eco-Marxists, neo-Communists or eco-fanatics. They all claim they want to save the world from global warming but their true agenda is to contribute to create a world government lead by the UN or in other ways increase the transfer of resources (redistribute resources) from the developed Western world to the third world. They are using our trust and faith in science to spread lies and hysteria that will allow Marxists to implement socialist ―solutions to a problem that never actually existed.

One section of Breivik’s manifesto points readers to a video clip of Lord Christopher Monckton, the climate change sceptic who is nearing the end of an Australian tour supported by mining magnate Gina Rinehart, The Climate Sceptics political party and part-funded by the Association for Mining and Exploration Companies. He is scheduled to tour New Zealand in August.

In the video, which is an excerpt of Lord Monckton’s October 2009 speech to Bethel University in St Thomas, Minnesota, Monckton states that attempts to agree a binding agreement to cut global emissions were a UN plot to install a world government. Lord Monckton told the audience:

A world government is going to be created. The transfer of wealth from the countries of the west to third-world countries in satisfaction of what’s called coyly a climate debt because we have been burning CO2 and they haven’t and we have been screwing up the climate – we haven’t been screwing up the climate, but that’s the line.

Now the apotheosis is at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. In the next few weeks, unless you stop it (the signing of the Copenhagen accord), your president will sign your freedom, democracy and prosperity away forever. It’s here in your great nation. It is here that perhaps at this 11th hour at the 59th minute at the 59th second you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty.

Echoing the paranoia that environmentalists are communists, UK-based Daily Telegraph columnist James Delingpole, a climate sceptic, is currently promoting his book Watermelons – The Environment Movement’s True Colours – in which he argues environmentalists are “green on the outside, red on the inside”.

When former Fox News pundit Glenn Beck heard of the Norwegian tragedy, he compared the young Norwegians killed by Breivik to “the Hitler youth”. Lord Monckton also once described a group of climate change campaigners as “the Hitler youth”.

All public commentators should understand clearly that readers and listeners can hang on their words. Their views and beliefs can accumulate and hang heavy in the psyche but very few followers would ever consider violence. No doubt the commentators themselves would recoil at any such thought.

But unfortunately for those now dead and scarred in the Norwegian terror attack, the weight of conspiracy became too much to bare for Anders Breivik.

Comments

“If this article is about the danger of rhetoric, the word denier is an example to consider.”

Oh tone.
Tone is so important.
We must strike the right tone.
(inset image of wringing of hands here)
Nope. That won’t do. Deniers exist. They are real. It’s a real word.
If somebody wants to call themselves (alternatively) a skeptic then they have to earn the right and demonstrate that they really are a skeptic.
Skeptic is a real word to to describe real people. It means something important. It should not be confused in any way with denialism.
Deniers like to do that because it makes them feel better and sound less KRAZY.
Skepticism is not denialism.
Denialism is not skepticism.
They really and truly are different things entirely.

“The word is so thoroughly emotionally associated with the holocaust that it’s use in other settings stir the same emotions.”

Yep, that what the HIV deniers say too. Your argument is very handy for them. Congratulations.

“One expects scientific discourse to be focused dispassionately on substantive issues. Yet doctors, scientists, and others who question whether human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) have been called the moral equivalent of Holocaust deniers
(..)
Op-ed pieces and non-technical articles continue to reiterate that it is beyond reasonable doubt that HIV causes AIDS, but the restrained language of the Durban Declaration has been replaced by strident denunciations: Public dissent from HIV = AIDS is said to be on a moral par with Holocaust denial.
(…)
Readers of this essay are invited to sample items on that website and to note the lack of substantive discussion and the preponderance of attacks on so-called “HIVdenialists.”

“The word is so thoroughly emotionally associated with the holocaust that it’s use in other settings stir the same emotions.”

No, it’s just a word. There is no patent or trademark or copyright on it. Climate change deniers just want to remove any effective label that allows people to quickly recognize or identify their position on the matter. While they continue to use “warmists”.

Have you approached WUWT to ask them to add to their site policy a notice that calling anyone a “warmist” is also unnacceptable?

The dictionary says “denier” is “one who denies”. Which is exactly what deniers do in regards to AGW. So not sure why it’s such a problem.

There are distinguishable differences between skeptics & deniers. Deniers are often motivated by money or politics or both. It’s like the difference between conservatives & right wingers, or progressives & left wingers. There are extremes of positions. Conservatives & progressives are slightly left & right of centre. Left & right wingers are the extremes of those positions.

“On his blog, where he rails against the rise of Islam in Europe, Mr Coutela presents Breivik - the man who has claimed the twin attacks in Norway that killed 76 people - as an “icon” and “the main defender of the West”. ” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8664568/Norway-attacks-National-Front-member-suspended-for-defending-Anders-Behring-Breivik.html

“On his blog, where he rails against the rise of Islam in Europe, Mr Coutela presents Breivik - the man who has claimed the twin attacks in Norway that killed 76 people - as an “icon” and “the main defender of the West”. ” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8664568/Norway-attacks-National-Front-member-suspended-for-defending-Anders-Behring-Breivik.html

Ah, another denialist who refuses to accept that Breivik is one of them. All they offer are ad hominem attacks or imaginative assumptions. Why not focus on the article instead of indulging in imaginative fantasies? For instance, Breivik said that the environmentalists true agenda is to create a world government in order to transfer wealth from the western world to the third world. Is this something you personally believe? Breivik also claimed that top scientists conspired to falsify data in order to prop up the premise of climate change. Again, is this something you believe in? These are important questions because the whole point of this article is to show how similar the ideology of Anders Breivik is to the ideology of conservatives, and specifically climate change denialists.

This guy needs to be put in jail for good or needs to be publicly executed and televised to put the fear into other wood-be murderers
And the climate change deniers, especially Alex Jones,Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh need to be esposed for their energy industry connections, especially Koch Industries, the largest offender in climate denial funding (google Koch climate denial). Climate change is such a horrible problem that can only get worse, that I think that dening the science in the media and in climate denial seminars like Monckton egages in should be made illegal, just as it is illegal in the States to cry fire in a crowded theatre. And this goes for anyone paying for climate science denial who own or represent an oil or coal company.

That said, I have to point out that I have found on the net that Jewish people in Europe are being attacked on the streets, so much so in Amsterdamn, that the police have to pose as Jews to bate the attackers into coming out in the open, and then arrest them. And this is largely being done by radical Muslim immigrants in Europe. So is it wise to let them continue to immigrate? We can learn a lesson from Israel which had to build a wall to keep the Muslim suicide bombers out.

Anders Breivik shared your beliefs that AGW was BS.. Tell me something “anonymous”, are you disgusted by the crimes of Anders Breivik, or are you disgusted that someone would dare shine a light on the common beliefs of Breivik and climate change denialists? If the latter, then the anger you feel is not toward Graham Readfearn or any of those who agree with the article’s premise, it’s toward yourself.

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